Activists agitating against the construction of a shopping mall in a park in Istanbul were violently dispersed by Turkish police. The move triggered mass protests in Turkey’s largest city as well as demonstrations elsewhere, now channeling widespread frustrations and anger with the rule of the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Early on it looked like most people were peaceful (Turkey) and had goals in mind. Today it is starting to look different. Riot for the sake of riot is not going to achieve any goal or objective. It once looked like an exercise in civil disobedience with peaceful goals and objectives.Not so much anymore. Erdogan looks like a dictator to me... but the protests are starting to look like just what Erdogan and his flunkies have called them. A clear message has been sent. Now I would say the big issue for the Turks is to know when to quit..and quit while you are ahead.. don't live up to the expectation of the Erdogan people... You have to know when to quit.....and quit while you are ahead. Nobody is going anywhere and the issues and problems that created this situations (Protests in Turkey) are not going away either. Quit while you are ahead..and give and provide an example to the coming generations of civil protest done in a civilized way that leads to lasting and meaningful changes...... Don't live up to the critics...

Well
its everybodys right to speak out his opinion, argueing wont harm
nobody, going out to the streets wont harm nobody. Standing behind his
thought and believies wont hurt nobody, to the contrary it would make a better world if people wont let them be oppressed such as the history showed us so often.

But
as far as i can see, and well actually i woulnd call myself a Erdogan
supported, just fornot beeind booed by everyone, i would say that this
seems realy hipocratical to me. I i just would look at the past few
years ive seen thar Erdogan is starting negotiations with Armenia, and
the French Politics are starting to vote about the Armenian Genocide. I
clearly see that the minority had no rights at all in turkey just 10
years ago, and People like Bartholomeos I, the patriarch of the
greek orthodox church would clearly tell you how oppressed they was in
practising their believes back in the days.

So is it
that i can see nowadays, the churches of my armenian friends are
starting to be rebuilded by government fonds, and it makes me lil proud
to see them practising their religions freely again.. It makes me happy,
that i talk with my Kurdish neighbour, about politics, about how bad it
was back in these days and that he and his family had to flee because
they had been charged and tortured in prisons in these days, but now his
family members in turkey can look for a bright future and are wanting
to reconcile with the turks, because there are no more hatred between
kurds and turks, because of Erdogan talking about them as our Kurdish
brother, and that there has to be peace between each other.

Yea
there are people in prisons because what they said, but what people
need to know is thar Mr. Erdogan was in Prison years ago just because of
a poem he told. People need to know that you cannot compare Turkey with
their home countries, because turkey is a country with so many ethnic
groups and confession, because turkey is a place where people are so
easyly throwing stones on police are are trying to attack police
officers. not that i want to defend police brutality. and i realy
believe that the police has used and is still using gas to oftenly
agains protestors. but police just have made experiences with supportes
of the PKK, wich was throwing stones and molotovs on them in the past
and that was what they did at Gezi Park as well (not the honest
protestors, which protested against the shopping mall, i study
environmentel Engineering myself.No need to say that i would be against a
huge shopping mall mysel. But there was just no real decision about
building anything, they was just thinking about a place with am museum
an opportunity to buy souveniers and stuff like that) If Isee pictures
about all the burning objects, all the destructed Busses, Buildings etc.
Im asking myself, why are people not able to protest peacefully, like
they did today in Ankara.

Why..oh was that the end of the Show. Sorry that i wasted your time Mrs. Amanpour

...its such a pity

The
5000 People dying each damn month in Syria wasnt worthy, more then 90
000 People in Mynmar expelled by Budhist and are homeless because of
their confession? Narf, youre right who is going to believe that. Maybe
you are right, maybe everybody should just report about Muslims as
people who are a danger for the world, maybe we they dont deserve better
this bloody people.

And here is´t is agoin, im no
defender/supporter of Muslims. i dont even f******* believe in Allah,
but im just fed up with all these damn hypocrisy.

Who those Muslim will go to suck the leg of non-Muslim powerful leader around when they got the trouble? The world’s popular media says “those are good Muslim”.

Quran13:But those who break the covenant of Allah after contracting it and sever that which Allah has ordered to be joined and spread corruption on earth–for them is the curse, and they will have the worst home….

They burned half of the city. Blocked the roads. Spread the fear. Forced artists and actors to support them.

All they want is to take back the power and force everyone to think like them. Erdogan and his party started to spread freedom 10 years ago.

I've been asking people who wrote these article to give solid examples of what Erdogan did that was against freedom. I just watched viedeo from people who are in the demostration, requesting copes lidears to set free.

It is shame that media (especially int'l) is covering the story single sided. Hope that they show the piecefull support the PM has. Millions.

Solid examples of what Erdogan did that was against freedom: I
personally know someone who was removed from an important post in Turkey
and replaced with a young AK boy with no experience and no ability to
handle the job. Turkey has more journalists in prison than any other
country, and they are labeled "terrorists". Erdogan has publicly called
anyone who peacefully protests against him a "terrorist". Erdogan has
locked up generals from the army with NO evidence that they did anything
wrong and has claimed they were trying to overthrow the government.
Erdogan has arrested and handcuffed health care workers who were
providing treatment to people who were injured illegally by police.
Media companies will be fined hundreds of millions of dollars for saying
anything bad about him, and he will use "anti-terrorism" laws to
justify this. Erdogan is trying to take advantage of controlling the
government by passing a constitution which takes away checks and
balances and gives him more power. Are you seriously claiming he is
spreading freedom? He is introducing Koran classes in public
schools...is he providing atheist classes, christian classes, jewish
classes, buddhist classes, or hindu classes? If not, that is not freedom
of religion, but rather state-sponsored religion.

Even with not allowing criticism in the media, he only
has 50% of the vote, which is probably an exaggeration...that is
pathetic. If I ran a country and didn't allow criticism of myself, I
would have 90% of the vote...it shows you what a horrible job he is
doing. He says that unemployment is caused by women looking for jobs and
he says they should stay home and have at least 3 children. That does
not sound like a man promoting freedom for women. Countries where women
are not working and not educated are very poor so he is making you
poorer which indirectly takes away your freedom if you are a man. You
will be dominated by foreigners who are richer than you. He doesn't mind. He gets very rich from these foreigners.

"Peaceful
support"? Really? Police arrest people who post pictures of the illegal and violent things they do...that's peaceful support?

The
international media is not mentioning the blatantly illegal things
Erdogan is doing...if anything, the international media is making him
sound much more legitimate than he is because they have financial interests in Turkey. He buses people to demonstrations
for himself and beats people who demonstrate against him.

Erdogan said democracy is a train you get off when you reach your destination.

What a lie! Artists and actors who supported protestors were those who were brave enough to risk their careers because in Turkey everyone knows that if you dare to speak against Erdogan you will be made to pay.

"It is shame that media (especially int'l) is covering the story single sided. Hope that they show the piecefull support the PM has. Millions."

The so called supporters who were at the airport when he returned from Africa were all brought there in vehicles of public service (Istanbul municipality), were handed free party flags and were either forced or paid to shout slogans in favor of your beloved PM. Most of them were public servants and were forced to attend with threats of fire off if they failed to do so.

We may need to do this in America if the continuing idiocy in Washington continues. Every day brings more foolishness, power-games and childish behavior from 75-year-old men bent on "getting their way". ENOUGH!

this is all what when people hate. some people agains all things and hate everyone too. there many here. gezi park was an armanian graveyard and the founder (mr.ismet) of turkey (turks) destroy all of them. what some turk doing is crocodile tears, you deserve erdogan.

First of all, TIME Magazine should take back Erdogan's Man of the year award! A ruthless, greedy man with a fundamentalist hatred in him doesn't deserve any awards but Facist of the year award! US Government should stop backing him up. He banned the freedom of speech in Turkey, hundreds of journalist are in prison! We support Gezi Park movement. TAKE HIS AWARD BACK!

@TCSemraAslanYalçın in year 2002 anonymous name was erdogan for turkey(not all but many) that time it was not possible to judge goverment but after 10 years.....everyone judge everything because erdogan democracy............(he is still anonymous for many) but not for global powers.

Terrorists are the ones anonymous! and now stirring our country. Get off of our beautiful cities. You just couldn't handle the power of our democratic nation.

May God remove your mask one day, so all the world see your ugly face and hateful heart. Who knows how many countries you have been steering!

Viewer of this video: please don't give credits to these one sided news.
Police had few over reaction in the beginning, but, now, these people,
are trying to disturb the piece our country has. They are the one (not
all of them of course) terrorizing the country. Police is using gas and water, because these terrorists are attacking police with iron balls, fireworks and stones; so, police has to use power.

People, pray for piece and love one another. There are dark clouds all over the world.

@TCSemraAslanYalçın Ironically enough I was thinking to myself earlier today that I'm starting to distrust ALL media and how I have't really watched the news in a couple of weeks because I KNOW I'm being censored then I thought to myself how I feel myself relying on Anon type ppl to do the right thing and how that helped balance things. All I have heard from anyone who likes Erdogan is how the 'protesters' are negative, but using my eyes (instead of blindly believing everything I hear/read), but not one Tayyip supporter has been able to DEFEND his actions. You do not have to be religious to have humanity, lately it seems like the opposite is true. Please reply to me and defend some of the videos/pictures I am posting, I really want to know how you justify such inhuman behaviour. Please I want to hear your humane explanation for this behaviour from the Prime Minister and the police who are suppose to PROTECT the people. @ececan #gezipark #direnAnkara

Hi , we are pasivist civilian protesters who are under heavy police brutality. Tear gasses are used plentifuly .. and not only in istanbul .. there are civil protests all over the country over 40 cities .. the police is using the harshest weapons available .. the PRIME MINISTER ordered the media channels to block all kinds of broadcasts and we are unheard. please I beg you to spread the word about this brutality...

As has been pointed out, this is an issue that transcends the whole park debate.

These protests are the inevitable result of a decade of provocations and escalations perpetrated by the ruling government. The reactions are the outpouring of bottled up frustrations by a populace that has had it with hitherto unseen levels of corruption, institutionalized nepotism, unabashed plutocracy and plain thuggery that became increasingly bolder and exponentially more blatant with every passing year.

Not only that, but the unashamed “oh yeah? what are you going to do about it?” attitude by the PM and his government is simply rubbing salt on the wounds and enraging the citizens of the country even more. The park issue is simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.

This is now a country where journalists are imprisoned every day, television channels are threatened or shut down whenever they’re even remotely critical of the ruling party, where political cartoonists are openly threatened, where communication is tapped on a regular basis, where university students are hauled off by the police for having an opinion, where police become increasingly comfortable with brazen abuses of power, where public and private land is confiscated and sold to the closest political ally, and the money directly funded into channels that will conveniently ensure the continuation of the current political setup.

@NikkiMino I believe that since the military coup in 1980 there have not been any large protests like this in Turkey. Also, I have never ever thought that there would be such widespread protests in Turkey. If you would say these things would gonna happen, I would say that you are crazy. Yet, it looks like in every society/country there are some thresholds. When such thresholds are reached, then it is just the domino-effect. It may be like that in China as well. The small ongoing protests in China may spread throughout the country. Yet, I believe it would be much more chaotic over there due to huge population.

Thousands are gathering to stop the fascism in Turkey. These people are ordinary people like you and me. Business people, artists, family members... But the Turkish media (especially TV channels) has been controlled by the government and none of them (except Halk TV) shows anything about this freedom fight. Please share it with your friends and make people understand the situation in Turkey. There is no marginal groups in this fight. We have to support hem with full heart. If you know anybody from media in your country, please contact with them. Turkish people are not alone. #cnn #gezipark #occupyistanbul #occupygezi #googlenews #news @CNN @CNNBRK @FOXNews #newyork @BBCBreaking @BBCWorld #freedom @freedomofpress

For foreigners and international media, this is what's happening in Turkey:

Turkey has woken up from its sleep during AKP's fascist regime.

Turkey is a secular republic founded in 1923. Since 1946 we have multi-party democracy. AKP (aka Justice and Development Party) is an Islamist party which was elected in 2002 for the first time after the economic crisis in 2001. They have been elected three... consecutive times so far. At first, their choices against human rights and freedom of speech were more subtle. Right now, nothing seems to be scaring the government.

5 days ago, a group of protestors went to Gezi Park, a park in the middle of Istanbul's European center Taksim. AKP's project is to destroy the park and build another shopping mall (Istanbul unfortunately has hundreds of them). Two days ago, the police started to attack the protestors who are trying to save the trees in that park. The violence did not end and Gezi Park protest became the final drop. Istanbul started to gather in Taksim. The police took all of the streets that end in Taksim in the afternoon. Me, a friend of mine and my dad somehow made it to Taksim and started waiting for the larger group that was in Istiklal Avenue to enter the square. The group in Istiklal was tens of thousands of people. You can see pictures on my profile. And they managed to push the police back towards the square. The police attacked the protestors with gas bombs and water cannons. One young man has been murdered by the water cannon and four other people because of gas bombs and panzers.

In the square, while we were waiting in restaurants that opened its doors to protestors, since that was pretty much the only space you could breath in, the police suddenly came up and threw gas bombs into the restaurant and chased the crowd in front of the restaurant into the place with batons. This is not a story I heard and am telling, this is what happened to me last night.

The battle in Taksim lasted as it is till 3 pm today. At 3.30pm the government has announced that the police has been ordered to step back. They did not but the gas fire ceased for a while. Around 4pm, millions were gathered in Gezi Park. Taksim was filled with people. There were no policemen but we suffered from gas bombs occasionally thrown from a helicopter. A helicopter that the AKP government had never used against the terrorism in South-East Turkey.

Around 8pm things got ugly again. Since the police had left Taksim, they took Besiktas, which is the European center on Bosphorus shore. An actual battle started in Besiktas. Police has thrown gas bombs in Bahcesehir University and Mimar Sinan University and State Conservatory. The security guard of Mimar Sinan, whom we, who went to that conservatory, all know, is hospitalized, his face is destroyed by a bullet. The question is whether that was a plastic or an actual bullet. The answer is what we fear.

Around 10pm, I heard one of my high school friends were under custody. He arrived home safely after spending around 14 hours under custody but we know that there are 939 people still under custody as of now. Their crime is having protested. Protest is our constitutional right. You can check the constitution of the Republic of Turkey, Article 34.

Right now, thousands still are on their way to Besiktas, same is happening in Ankara, Izmir, Antalya, Edirne, Mersin, Eskisehir, Adana, Kayseri, Konya and in many more. Demonstrations have happened throughout today in San Francisco, Boston, New York City, Paris, as well as Poland, Azerbaijan, England, Spain...

As of now 53 people are officially injured but the police keeps gas bombing the places, such as the universities in Besiktas that I listed above, that hold many injured people.

Pharmacies give out gas masks and medicine for free, lawyers and doctors offer their services for free and are in fields.

THIS IS NOT BECAUSE OF TREES BEING DESTROYED, THIS IS BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE A RIGHT TO TALK, TO PROTEST, THIS IS BECAUSE WE HAVE JOURNALISTS IN JAIL, THIS IS BECAUSE THE PRIME MINISTER STILL SAYS THEY DON'T CARE WHAT WE DO AND THEY WILL CONTINUE WITH THE GEZI PROJECT, THIS IS BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE UNDER CUSTODY BECAUSE THEY USED THEIR RIGHT TO PROTEST, THIS IS BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT MADE THE POLICE ATTACK THE GEZI PROTESTORS. THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT SERVING ITS PEOPLE, IT'S KILLING THEM.

This is what's happening in Turkey. This is not Turkish Spring, we don't need revolution. This is Turkey, taking its secular democracy back. No more corruption, no more radical Islamism, no more FASCISM!

Well, what did you expect electing Muslim legislatures of murderous, medieval theocrats? All Muslims, all Muslims believing the teachings of the Koran, are accomplices in a worldwide jihadist movement to kill, kill, kill. It's the only thing humankind does well and without pause. All government is corrupt and fascistic. Governance is all about keeping the population under control. In the USA we have drones, spies, cameras everywhere, fascist legislation (the Patriot Acts), massive corruption, nasty cops, and very sophisticated technologies to control people...five layers of police/authorities in every state. Please, whatever you do, don't dial 9-1-1 for help. Americans have enough blood on their hands.

@pandros042@tmalkoc73 Sorry to know what's happening in Turkey. Turkish are now out to dmanage Turkey from their own hands... so much mesmerized to see Turkish as a secular state and not that of Islamic country ... the very foundation on which it was built. Minutely reading and seeing the whole story behind there appears that CIA which was silently running into their blood is now out to destabilize Turkey so as to proceed with their agenda again. Live long Turkey...

Erdogan wants to build a copy of the old army barracks because those barracks were once the site of extreme islamist riots. The rioters then (early 1900s) killed several government officers. The riots were suppressed by the "movement army" under Mustafa Kemal's command. The rebuilding of the army barracks today is a sleazy revenge and provocation of the Erdogan government.